The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a charter school operator in Chicago with defrauding investors in a $37.5 million bond offering for school construction by making materially misleading statements about transactions that presented a conflict of interest.

The SEC alleges that UNO Charter School Network Inc. and United Neighborhood Organization of Chicago not only failed to disclose a multi-million-dollar contract with a windows company owned by the brother of one of its senior officers, but investors also weren’t informed about the potential financial impact the conflicted transaction had on its ability to repay the bonds.

UNO is settling the SEC’s charges by agreeing to undertakings to improve its internal procedures and training, including the appointment of an independent monitor.

“UNO misled its bond investors by assuring them it had reported conflicts of interest in connection with state grants when in fact it had not,” said Andrew J. Ceresney, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Investors had a right to know that UNO’s transactions with related persons jeopardized its ability to pay its bonds because they placed the grant money that was primarily funding the projects at risk.”

Newark elects Ras Baraka as mayor. Baraka is a former public high school principal, and son of the late poet Amiri Baraka (who came out to support the student walkout against racially segregated leveling at my alma mater, Columbia High School, in 2006). His opponent, Shavar Jeffries, sat on the school board, founded a charter school, and was supported by the charter lobby. From the Star Ledger:

A major focal point of the election was the debate over the schools and state-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson’s controversial “One Newark” school reorganization plan — which calls for the relocation and consolidation of one-quarter of the city’s schools and turning over some neighborhood schools to charter operators.

Baraka was a fierce opponent of the plan, which would have involved shutting down schools and moving kids all around the city. The equivalent plan in Chicago, Renaissance 2010, has been disastrous, and disproportionately so for black students. Jeffries supported “One Newark,” along with our glorious governor.

Though Jeffries raised nearly double as much money as Baraka ($1.7mil vs. $945k), Baraka won with 54% of the vote. Though I haven’t been following this election as closely as I would have liked, seems like a significant strike against the school privatization movement in NJ.

I’m a bit late in blogging this news and now there’s only 10 hours left to back the project. Do it! Your money supports the printing of a full-color booklet documenting the destruction of America’s public schools currently taking place under the guise of “reform.” Copies will be given to unions & community groups to use for fundraising and organizing, but won’t be for sale online. But a $10 Kickstarter pledge gets you a physical copy. (My video will be available for free.)

The propaganda machine of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) is sophisticated and insanely well-funded, and has nearly succeeded in masquerading the gutting of our public school system as a “progressive” movement. The actual fruits of GERM include undermining teachers unions and democratic school boards through privately run charter schools; a counterproductive obsession with standardized testing and unidimensional “accountability”; and the shuttering of dozens of schools in cities across the country. The research supporting GERM ranges from non-existent to fraudulent. Rarely do these reforms benefit students, quite often the reverse, though the billionaires who fund the movement do stand to profit both directly and indirectly.

My video will be an attempt at a counter-narrative exposing the pernicious role that billionaire philanthropists and their foundations play in the “education reform” debate. The video will be based on an essay in the booklet by Joanne Barkan, who has done excellent reporting on the subject, and will feature images from Katrina Ohstrom of abandoned Chicago schools. This project is my first foray into the film essay, a form I’ve long admired. I hope I can do the material justice. Stay tuned!

Do you see what is going on here? The IMF’s bailout is not marked for Ukrainian social services or any other benefit to the citizenry. All that is about to be taken away, in the neoliberal style. The bailout money goes to Kiev and back out again to the Western financial institutions holding Ukrainian debt. In effect, debt held by private-sector creditors is transferred to the IMF, which uses it to leverage Ukraine into a free-market model via its standard conditionality: No austerity, no dough.

Must read piece by Mychal Denzel Smith and Jesse Myerson in The Nation, featuring both sober historical analysis and concrete proposals to organize around (Job & Income Guarantee, Land Value Tax, and Baby Bonds):

Before laying out our proposals, we should clarify why, historically, eliminating racism requires an economic program. America’s story is one of economic exploitation driving the creation and maintenance of racism over time. The inception of our country’s economic system condemned black people to an underclass for a practical rather than bigoted reason: the exploitation of African labor. Imported Africans were prevented by customs and language barriers from entering into contracts, and unlike the indigenous population, their lack of familiarity with the terrain prevented them from running away from their slavers. To morally justify an economy dependent on oppression, in a nation newly founded on the rights of men to freedom, it was necessary to socially construct a biological fiction called race, one that deemed some people subhuman, mere property.